Cooking just for fun

'08 Brentwood Corn Festival

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 06:38:27 -0700

Brentwood Corn Festival
Thai Corn Salad

¼ cup olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 ears corn, shucked and kernels cut from the cob
1 small red onion, halved, peeled and cut in julienne
2 serrano chiles, halved, seeded and minced
salt and pepper to taste

1 tomato, cored, halved, seeded and cut in small dice
1 scallion, finely chopped
¼ cup basil leaves, roughly chopped
¼ cup mint leaves, roughly chopped
¼ cup cilantro leaves, roughly chopped

Dressing
1 tablespoon of sugar
juice of 1 lime, about 2 oz.
1 tablespoon fish sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Optional garnish: ½ cup chopped roasted peanuts

Mix dressing ingredients together in a small bowl until the sugar dissolves.
In a sautee pan on medium high heat cook the garlic in the olive oil until it turns lightly brown and the add the corn and stir well. After a few minutes add the red onions and chiles, cook until the red onions are just warm through and then add the dressing. Remove from heat and toss in the tomatoes, chopped scallions and herb leaves and then season to taste and garnish with chopped peanuts.

BLTC Salad (Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato and Corn )
With Butter Milk-Blue Cheese Dressing

4 slices of bacon or pancetta, cut in medium dice
corn kernels from 2 ears of corn
¼ cup diced red onion
1# heirloom tomatoes, washed and cored
1 head Frissee lettuce, (curly endive)cored, washed and spun dry

Dressings

For the frissee
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Blue Cheese Dressing
½ cup crumbled blue cheese
2 tablespoons lemon juice
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Garnish : ¼ cup tarragon leaves

1. In a medium size mixing bowl or food processor stir together all of the blue cheese dressing ingredients and season to taste.
2. Cook the bacon in a sauté pan on medium heat until lightly crispy and then add the corn and red onion and cook until the corn is just tender.
3. Place the frissee in a bowl and toss with some olive oil and season with some salt and pepper and then divide between 4 plates.
4. Slice the tomatoes 1/2” thick horizontally and lay 4 slices, overlapping, across the frissee.
5. Spoon some of the corn and bacon over the tomatoes.
6. Drizzle liberally with the buttermilk dressing.
7. Garnish with the tarragon leaves.

Cheesy Corn Fritters
1 ½ cups flour
½ cup coarse corn meal
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ tsp. salt
¼ cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon saffron threads soaked in 2 tablespoons water
1 cup buttermilk
½ cup grated chedder cheese
¼ cup melted butter
1 ½ cups whole kernel corn

Optional garnish: Truffle salt

Preparation:
Sift flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Combine eggs, milk and saffron. Fold in dry ingredients [add more or less flour - enough to bind batter]; add the melted butter, cheese & corn last. Drop by tablespoons into hot vegetable oil and deep fry about 5 minutes or until golden brown. Serve corn fritters warm.

Soft Center Chocolate Soufflé Cake

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:23:46 -0700

12 oz. bittersweet chocolate
6 oz. butter
5.5 oz. sugar
5 eggs separated

Melt chocolate with butter over a double boiler. Spray 2.5" stainless steel cake rings with vegetable oil spray and set on a flat baking tray with a square of parchment underneath. Whisk yolks with 1/2 the sugar to a pale yellow. Whisk whites until a thick froth, then add remaining sugar and whip to soft peaks. fold yolks into chocolate, then fold in whites. Fill the cake rings almost to the top and chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 400˚.
Bake cakes for 8 minutes. Gently lift cakes off of sheet tray and place on plates. Remove the paper squares by sliding them out from under the cakes. With a mall paring knife cut around the inside edge of the mould to free cake from the ring. carefully lift ring off and serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. The cakes should be slightly runny in the center, hence the name
"the Oozing Chocolate Cake".

*These can purchased through restaurant or bakery supply stores

Cooking with EQ

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:10:28 -0800

When I’m not in the kitchen or with my family, you will probably find me strumming my guitar. Sometimes when I play, I’m thinking about how making good food is like making good music. Just as every note and nuance is important to musicians, chefs season and tweak flavors to create a flavor profile, or an array of taste-notes in a dish that are balanced and full. It’s important a flavor strikes you immediately when you put a bite of food in your mouth. In music treble, or high notes are the ones that cut through the wall of sound and make your ears perk up, in cooking the same principle applies. “High notes” are the elements that bring other flavors to life. These are the ingredients that “turn the lights on”, making it possible to “see” the other flavors. Salt and citrus are prime examples. We balance those high notes with mid-range flavors to carry the flavors through as you eat it. These may include the main flavorings of a dish—meat and vegetables, olive oil, cream. Finally, we create base (bass) notes that stay with you after you swallow.
A good recipe has to be in balance. In music the balance is treble, mid-range, and bass. In cooking it’s all about salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and, some might add, that elusive savory quality the Japanese call umami. In music, you can change things by turning up or down the volume, adding harmonies, or playing with the instrumentation. You can vary your cooking by complementing and contrasting textures and flavors—crunchy nuts, pungent herbs, caramelized onions. You might turn up the volume with salt, lime, or some tongue-searing habañero chilies. Or you may create softer notes with silky cream, a taste of honey, and gentle flavors that linger on the tongue long after the eating ends. What makes one song, or recipe, different from another is you—the cook or musician—and that special way you put everything together and serve it up.
I hope to helps you make your cooking rock.

Shrimp & Andouille Corn Cakes

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:46:41 -0800

This is a great appetizer, hors d'oeuvre or even a side dish.
You should definitely plan on guests eating more than you think!

Yields 24 small cakes or 12 medium sized ones

Shrimp and Andouille Corn Cakes

1/4 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon. baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 whole eggs
1/4 cup whole milk
1/4 cup chopped raw shrimp
1/4 diced cooked Andouille sausage, about one 3 oz. sausage cut into small dice
1/4 cup chopped scallions
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
salt and black pepper

Butter for cooking.

1. Mix dry ingredients together.
2. Mix wet ingredients together.
3. Mix dry into wet.
4. In a hot skillet on medium-high heat place a small knob of butter in the pan
5. Then drop spoonfuls of the batter into the pan and cook on each side for about a minute or two. Serve a few per person warm with avocado salsa on the side.

Avocado Corn Salsa

1 avocados, peeled, pitted and diced
1 ears of grilled corn, cut of the cob
1 Roma tomato, halved, seeded and cut in very small dice
1/4 cup minced red onion
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 jalapenos seeded and minced finely
1/4 cup minced cilantro
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine ingredients in a mixing bowl.

Chayote-Corn Succotash

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:34:22 -0800

Succotash may be old news, but you can make it new all over again by adding a different ingredient. Chayote is a pear-shaped vegetable (botanically, it’s actually a fruit) in the same family as cucumbers, melons, and summer squash. If you can’t find it, substitute zucchini. Grilling the vegetables also give the succotash a great smokey flavor that stands up to bold flavor sauces and hearty meats.